Waitress – Cherry Pie

Adrienne Shelly’s uplifting 2007 film Waitress revolves around Jenna, the titular waitress, whose life borders on unlivable because of her abusive husband Earl. Driven by misery in her home life, she focuses her attention on work, concocting delicious pies with catchy names hitting close to home for her which she aspires to enter into a nearby pie contest. Her accidental pregnancy only serves to deepen her melancholy. Becky, Dawn and Joe, her friends and the owner of the diner, try to coax her to leave her husband and begin anew. After Jim Pomatter, a new doctor, moves into town, subbing in for Jenna’s usual physician, she begins a torrid affair with him.

A diary, given Jenna as a baby journal, allows the audience access to the machinations of her mind. All the while, she makes creative pies and continues her secret affair with Jim, her affection for her unplanned child growing by the day. Finally, her baby girl arrives. Her husband, jealous of the bond between mother and child, chides Jenna for loving the child more than him. Jenna leaves Earl, telling him she plans to divorce him, as she has not loved him in a long time.

As she readies herself to depart the hospital, her friends relate the bad news that Joe has gone into a coma, triggering Jenna’s memory that he had left her an envelope as she was about to give birth. Joe, foreseeing his own health issues, puts a check for Jenna in the envelope, for nearly $300,000. On her way out of the hospital Jim stops her, but she quickly ends their affair moving on to care for her child.

Shelly’s film shifts to the future, showing the viewer that Jenna won the pie contest and used the money left her by Joe and her winnings to buy his old diner. She renames the diner Lulu’s Pies after her daughter. This coda clearly show’s Jenna’s happiness and revamped life.

As you watch a movie about pie, you cannot help but salivate. What better to go along with the film than the comfort food that is cherry pie. Before watching the movie, bake yourself this delicious cherry pie and eat it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream while watching Adrienne Shelly’s heartwarming Waitress…

Cherry Pie Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch double crust pie
• 4 tablespoons quick-cooking tapioca
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup white sugar
• 4 cups pitted cherries
• 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 tablespoons butter

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (205 degrees C). Place bottom crust in piepan. Set top crust aside, covered.
2. In a large mixing bowl combine tapioca, salt, sugar, cherries and extracts. Let stand 15 minutes. Turn out into bottom crust and dot with butter. Cover with top crust, flute edges and cut vents in top. Place pie on a foil lined cookie sheet — in case of drips!
3. Bake for 50 minutes in the preheated oven, until golden brown.

Cooking time: 1 hour 15 minutes. – Servings: 8. – Back to Top

Tags: american south, becky and dawn, cherry pie, earl, escape on a pie contest, grand prize, jenna, jim pomatter, joe's pie diner, keri russell, lulu, moon pie, physician, residency, straw that broker the camel's back, unhappy marriage, voiceovers, waitress